I sailed on the Carnival Conquest from Nov. 26th - Dec. 4th because of the excellent ports of call. The itinerary was Amber Cove, DR; Santo Domingo, DR; Bonaire; and Aruba. The itinerary is one of the most important reasons why I booked this cruise. This was my 15th cruise overall and the 8th time sailing on Carnival. I would say that I am a loyal customer and loved Carnival Cruise Lines up until my most recent experience.
To start things off, I will talk about embarkation, which was terrible. I don't understand the necessity of having to choose an embarkation time slot when it absolutely doesn't help with moving the line along. The line was extremely long, and I don't recall ever having to wait almost 2 hours just to board a ship.
Amber Cove was nice; however, I planned to tour Mt. Isabel via cable car, but the taxi fare was $70.00 round trip just for a 10 minute taxi ride. This was astronomically high and utterly ridiculous! Suffice it to say, I never made it to Mt. Isabel. After the ship left Amber Cove, our next destination was Santo Domingo, DR. Well, we never made it.
I loved our cabin steward Gede from Indonesia. He always smiled and greeted us by name. He went out of his way to make sure that we were comfortable. Absolutely love him!
Port Everglades is beautiful, but embarking and debarking there was a disaster!
Amber Cove is nice, but very expensive!